allowed to fall had a great deal to do with the almost total, though
indeed temporary, extinction of the wheeled pleasure carriage in
western Europe, there is another fact which must be taken into
consideration in any endeavour to account for it. As will appear
in a little, the renaissance of carriage-building in the sixteenth
century was for a time retarded in various places by a widespread
feeling of distrust against anything that could be thought to lead to
an accusation of effeminacy. Laws were passed—as was the case, for
instance, in 1294, under Philip the Fair of France—forbidding people
to ride in coaches, and sharp comparisons were drawn by the satirists
between the hardy horsemen of old and the modern comfort-loving
individuals who lolled, or were supposed to loll—though how they
could have done so in those springless monstrosities is past
comprehension—in their gaudily decorated carriages. I would not insist
upon the point, but it may be that in the reaction against such undue
luxuries as had helped to bring ruin to the Roman Empire, carriages for
that reason became unpopular. From which, of course, it would follow
that the disappearance of the carriage led, in part at any rate, to the
neglect of the roads, and such new roads as were made would be laid
down primarily for the convenience only of the horsemen. The same thing
applied also to the litters, though their popularity naturally followed
merely upon the state of the roads.
Before attempting to deal with these litters, it will be well to see
what is known—it is not very much—of such wheeled carriages as
there were at this time, and at the outset it is necessary to bear in
mind that the old chroniclers used the word _carriage_ in anything
but its modern significance. To them a carriage was no more than an
agricultural or baggage cart. Time and again you have accounts of this
or that great man making his way, peaceably or otherwise, through
some country, accompanied by numbers of carriages. These were simply
his luggage carts, and although, as in earlier times, the cart, gaily
ornamented, could very easily be converted into a pleasure carriage,
it is important to remember the real meaning of the word. Such
carts, in point of fact, were extremely common. In England they were
generally square boxes made of planks borne on two wheels. Others,
of a lighter pattern, were built of “slatts latticed with a willow
trellis.” Their chief peculiarity was to be found in their wheels,
which were furnished with extraordinarily large nails with prominent
heads. Contemporary manuscripts give rough pictures of such carts.
One of these is shown drawn by three dogs. One man squats inside, a
second helps to push it from behind. A most interesting illustration
in the Louterell Psalter—a fourteenth-century manuscript—shows a
reaper’s cart going uphill. Here the two huge, six-spoked wheels with
their projecting nails are clearly shown. The platform of the cart is
strengthened by upright stakes with a cross-rail connecting them at the
sides. The driver, standing over the wheels on the poles, is holding a
long whip which is flicking the leader of three horses. Three other men
are helping at the rear, and the stacks of wheat are held in position
by ropes.
The earliest Anglo-Saxon carriage of which there is record belongs to
the twelfth century. Strutt refers to a drawing in one of the Cottonian
manuscripts, which represents a peculiar four-wheeled contrivance with
two upright poles rising from the axle-trees, from which poles is slung
a hammock. Such a chariot or _chaer_ was apparently used by the more
distinguished Anglo-Saxons when setting out upon long journeys. The
drawing shows the figure of Joseph on his way to meet Jacob in Egypt,
but is no doubt a correct representation of a travelling carriage in
the artist’s lifetime. This hammock is interesting as being a primitive
form of suspension, which may or may not have led to the later
experiments in that direction.
[Illustration: _Fourteenth Century English Carriage_
(_From the Louterell Psalter_)]
[Illustration: _Fourteenth Century Reaper’s Cart_
(_From the Louterell Psalter_)]
A most luxurious English carriage of the fourteenth century is shown in
the Louterell Psalter. This was obviously evolved from a four-wheeled
waggon. Five horses, harnessed at length, drew it, a postilion with
a short whip riding on the second, and another with a long whip on the
wheeler. The tunnel-like body was highly ornamented, and its front
decorated with carved birds and men’s heads. The frame of the body was
continued in front as two poles, and underneath, hanging by a ring and
looking rather ludicrous, is shown a small trunk. Women only appear in
this carriage, the men riding behind it.
“Nothing,” remarks M. Jusserand, “gives a better idea of the
encumbering, awkward luxury which formed the splendour of
civil life during this century than the structure of these
heavy machines. The best had four wheels; three or four horses
drew them, harnessed in a row, the postilion being mounted on
one, armed with a short-handled whip of many thongs; solid
beams rested on the axles, and above this framework rose an
archway rounded like a tunnel; as a whole, ungraceful enough.
But the details,” he goes on to say, speaking of the carriage
shown in the Louterell Psalter, “were extremely elegant, the
wheels were carved and their spokes expanded near the hoop
into ribs forming pointed arches; the beams were painted and
gilt, the inside was hung with those dazzling tapestries, the
glory of the age; the seats were furnished with embroidered
cushions; a lady might stretch out there, half sitting, half
lying; pillows were disposed in the corners as if to invite
sleep, square windows pierced the sides and were hung with
curtains. Thus travelled,” he continues with a touch of
picturesqueness, “the noble lady, slim in form, tightly clad
in a dress which outlined every curve of the body, her long,
slender hands caressing the favourite dog or bird. The knight,
equally tightened in his _cote-hardie_, regarded her with
a complacent eye, and, if he knew good manners, opened his
heart to his dreamy companion in long phrases like those in
the romances. The broad forehead of the lady, who has perhaps
coquettishly plucked off her eyebrows and stray hairs, a
process about which satirists were indignant, brightens up at
moments, and her smile is like a ray of sunshine. Meanwhile
the axles groan, the horse-shoes—also heavily nailed—crunch
the ground, the machine advances by fits and starts, descends
into the hollows, bounds altogether at the ditches, and falls
violently back with a dull noise.”
Other gaily decorated carriages, surprisingly like our modern vans,
though on two wheels, are shown in _Le Roman du Roy Meliadus_, another
fourteenth-century manuscript preserved in the British Museum, but only
the richest and most powerful of the nobles could afford to keep them.
“They were bequeathed,” says M. Jusserand, “by will from one
another, and the gift was valuable. On September 25, 1355,
Elizabeth de Burgh, Lady Clare, wrote her last will and
endowed her eldest daughter with ‘her great carriage with
the coverture, carpets, and cushions.’ In the twentieth year
of Richard II, Roger Rouland received £400 sterling for a
carriage destined for Queen Isabella; and John le Charer,
in the sixth [year] of Edward III, received £1000 for the
carriage of Lady Eleanor—the King’s sister.”
These were fabulous sums, when it is remembered that an ox cost about
thirteen shillings and a sheep but one shilling and five pence.
Now it may be that such a “great carriage” as is shown in the Louterell
Psalter was identical with the _whirlicote_ in which, according to
Stowe, Richard II and his mother took refuge on the occasion of Wat
Tyler’s rebellion.
“Of old time,” says this honest tailor, who himself witnessed
the introduction of coaches into England, “coaches were not
known in this island, but chariots or whirlicotes, then so
called, and they only used of princes or great estates, such
as had their footmen about them; and for example to note, I
read that Richard II, being threatened by the rebels of Kent,
rode from the Tower of London to the Mile’s End, and with him
his mother, because she was sick and weak, in a whirlicote,
the Earl of Buckingham ... knights and Esquires attending on
horseback. But in the next year [1381] the said King Richard
took to wife Anne, daughter to the King of Bohemia, that
first brought hither the riding upon side saddles; and so was
the riding in whirlicotes and chariots forsaken, except at
coronations and such like spectacles.”
From this it would appear that the _whirlicote_ (which may, as Bridges
Adams suggests, have been derived from “whirling” or moving “cot” or
house) was identical with the _chariot_ or _chaer_. Unfortunately
the translators of Froissart, who mentions the incident of Richard’s
ride from the Tower, cannot agree upon the correct word to render
the original _charette_. _Charette_, _chariette_, _chare_, _chaer_
(Wicliffe), and _char_ (Chaucer) all occur in the early chronicles, and
there seems no means, if, indeed, there is any need, of differentiating
between them. All were probably waggons modified for the conveyance
of such passengers as could afford to pay highly for the privilege.
One fact, however, suggests that there were at any rate two different
kinds of carriages in England at this time, for we read that the body
of Richard II was borne to its last resting-place “upon a chariette
or sort of litter on wheels, such as is used by citizens’ wives who
are not able or not allowed to keep ordinary litters.” With this in
mind, it is difficult to agree with Sir Walter Gilbey when he says[15]
that the _chare_ was a horse litter, though it is fair to add that he
acknowledges an opposite view.
The _charette_ is obviously the French form of _caretta_, which was
the carriage in which Beatrice, the wife of Charles of Anjou, entered
Naples in 1267.[16] This vehicle is described as being covered both
inside and without with sky-blue velvet powdered with golden lilies.
Pope Gregory X entered Milan in 1273 in a similar carriage. The
_caretta_ was probably an open car “shaded simply by a canopy.” In the
next century, the _Anciennes Chroniques de Flandres_, a manuscript
belonging to 1347, shows an illustration of Ermengarde, the wife of
Salvard, Lord of Rousillon, travelling in a four-wheeled conveyance
remarkably like the ordinary country waggon of to-day.
“The lady,” says Sir Walter Gilbey, “is seated on the
floor-boards of a springless four-wheeled cart or waggon,
covered in with a tilt that could be raised or drawn aside;
the body of the vehicle is of carved wood and the outer edges
of the wheels are painted grey to represent iron tyres. The
conveyance is drawn by two horses driven by a postilion
who bestrides that on the near [left] side. The traces are
apparently of rope, and the outer trace of the postilion’s
horse is represented as passing under the saddle-girth, a
length of leather (?) being let in for the purpose; the
traces are attached to swingle-bars carried on the end of a
cross-piece secured to the base of the pole where it meets the
body.
“Carriages of some kind,” he continues, “appear also to have
been used by men of rank when travelling on the Continent.
_The Expeditions to Prussia and the Holy Land of Henry,
Earl of Derby, in_ 1390 _and_ 1392-3 (Camden Society’s
Publications, 1894) indicate that the Earl, afterwards King
Henry IV of England, travelled on wheels at least part of the
way through Austria.
“The accounts kept by his Treasurer during the journey contain
several entries relative to carriages; thus on November 14,
1392, payment is made for the expenses of two equerries named
Hethcote and Mansel, who were left for one night at St.
Michael, between Leoban and Kniltefeld, with thirteen carriage
horses. On the following day the route lay over such rugged
and mountainous country that the carriage wheels were broken
despite the liberal use of grease; and at last the narrowness
of the way obliged the Earl to exchange his own carriage for
two smaller ones better suited to the paths of the district.
“The Treasurer also records the sale of an old carriage at
Friola for three florins. The exchange of the Earl’s ‘own
carriage’ is the significant entry: it seems very unlikely
that a noble of his rank would have travelled so lightly that
a single cart would contain his own luggage and that of his
personal retinue; and it is also unlikely that he used one
luggage cart of his own. The record points directly to the
conclusion that the carriages were passenger vehicles used by
the Earl himself.”
It is to be noted that the carriage of the Lady Ermengarde was a
Flemish vehicle. Flanders, indeed, seems to have shared with Hungary
the honour of playing pioneer in carriage-building throughout the ages,
and long after the general adoption of coaches in Europe, Flemish
models, and also Flemish mares, were freely imported into the various
countries.
Another carriage of this time is described in a pre-Chaucerian poem
called _The Squyr of Low Degree_, in which the father of a Hungarian
princess is made to say:—
“Tomorrow ye shall on hunting fare,
And ride my daughter in a _chare_.
It shall be covered with velvet red,
And cloths of fine gold all about your head;
With damask white, and azure blue,
Well diapered with lilies new;
Your pomelles shal be ended with gold,
Your chains enammelled many a fold.”
The pomelles no doubt were “the handles to the rods affixed to the
roof, and were for the purpose of holding on by, when deep ruts or
obstacles in the road caused an unusual jerk in the vehicle.” One
notices that lilies were apparently a common form of decoration on
these early carriages, but it is to be regretted that the accounts in
general are so scanty.
We come to the litters.
Of these the commonest, both in England and on the Continent, seem to
have been modifications of the Roman _basterna_. Generally they were
covered with a sort of vault with various openings. Two horses, one
at either end, carried them. The great majority held only one person.
Thrupp describes them in some detail.
“They were,” he says, “long and narrow—long enough for a
person to recline in—and no wider than could be carried
between the poles which were placed on either side of the
horses. They were about four to five feet long, and two
feet six inches wide, with low sides and higher ends. The
entrance was in the middle, on both sides, the doors being
formed sometimes by a sliding panel and sometimes simply by a
cross-bar. The steps were of leather or iron loops, the latter
being hinged to turn up when the litter was placed on the
ground. The upper part was formed by a few broad wooden hoops,
united along the top by four or five slats, and over the whole
a canopy was placed, which opened in the middle, at the sides,
and ends, for air and light.”
Isolated references to these horse-litters are scattered throughout
the old chronicles, but afford meagre information. William of
Malmesbury states that the body of William Rufus was placed on a _reda
caballaria_, a horse-litter, the name of which suggests its origin.
According to Matthew of Westminster, King John, during his illness
in 1216, was removed from Swinstead Abbey to Newark in a similar
vehicle, the _lectica equestre_. Generally, however, the horse-litter
was reserved exclusively for women, men being unwilling to risk an
accusation of effeminacy. So, in recording the death of Earl Ferrers
in 1254, from injuries received in an accident to his conveyance, the
historian is careful to explain that his Lordship suffered from the
gout, which was why he happened to be in a litter at all.
As time passed, the litter rather than the wheeled carriage became the
state vehicle. Froissart, writing of the second wife of Richard II,
describes “la june Royne d’Angleterre” as travelling “en une litere
moult riche qui etoit ordondée pour elle.” Margaret, the daughter of
Henry VII, journeyed to Scotland, it is true, on the back of a “faire
palfrey,” but she was followed by “one vary riche litere, borne by
two faire coursers vary nobly drest; in wich litere the sayd queene
was borne in the intryng of the good townes, or otherwise to her good
playsher.” But on the Continent new improvements were being made in
wheeled carriages, and when in 1432 Henry VI wrote to the Archbishop
of Canterbury and other high dignitaries of the Church, with regard to
the widow of Henry of Navarre, he ordered them to place two _chares_ at
her disposal, rather than the litter to which one might have thought
she would be entitled. Sir Walter Gilbey translates the word to mean a
horse-litter, but Markland, in his paper on the _Early Use of Carriages
in England_ (_Archæologia_, Vol. XX), differentiates between the two,
ascribing a more ceremonial use to the litter, and this seems to me
to be nearer the truth. Both vehicles, for instance, are mentioned by
Holinshed in his description of the coronation ceremony of Catherine
of Aragon in 1509. The Queen herself rode in a litter of “white clothe
of golde, not covered nor bailed, which was led by two palfreys clad
in white damask doone to the ground, head and all, led by her footman.
Over her was borne a canopie of cloth of gold, with four gilt staves,
and four silver bells. For the bearing of which canopie were appointed
sixteen knights, foure to beare it one space on foot, and other foure
another space.” But the Queen’s ladies followed her in _chariots_
decorated in red, and the same thing is true of Anne Boleyn, who in
1533 rode to her coronation in a litter, but was followed by four
chariots, three decorated with red, and one with white. Such chariots
probably resembled those to be described in the next chapter; the point
to notice here is that they were being used now, and although the
litters still continued until the time of Charles II—Mary de Medicis,
the Queen-Mother of France, entered London in 1638 in a litter, though
she had travelled from Harwich in a coach, and as late as 1680 “an
accident happened to General Shippon, who came in a horse-litter
wounded to London; when he paused by the brewhouse in St. John Street
a mastiff attacked the horses, and he was tossed like a dog in a
blanket”—the wheeled carriage once again became the vehicle of honour,
and at the coronation of Mary in 1553 a chariot[17] and not a litter
was used by the Queen. This had six horses, and was covered with a
“cloth of tissue.” Whatever its discomforts may have been, it cannot
have been less dignified than the litter which it had, now for all
time, supplanted.
_Chapter the Third_
_INTRODUCTION OF THE COACH_ (1450-1600)
“Go—call a Coach; and let a Coach be called:
Let him that calls the Coach, be called the Caller!
And in his calling, let him no thing call,
But Coach! COACH!! COACH!!!”
_Chrononhotonthologos._
Both horse-litters and early wheeled carriages seem to have had some
pretensions towards comfort. They afforded protection against the
inclemency of the weather; there had been certain rude attempts at
suspension, and the soft cushions helped to minimise the unpleasant
joltings to which every carriage was liable. When, however, the
renaissance of carriage-building occurred, people seem to have been
but little more progressive than they had been centuries before. There
were, as I have already hinted, still two factors which militated
against a speedy adoption of such vehicles, more comfortable though
they undoubtedly were, as now began to be made—the state of the roads,
and the dislike of anything bordering upon the effeminate.
The roads had become no better. Even those most eager to welcome the
new carriages must have been dismayed at the state of the country, not
only in England, but in every European country. As one writer of the
sixteenth century complains, the roads, “by reason of straitness and
disrepair, breed a loathsome weariness to the passenger.” Nor is this
writer a solitary grumbler: there are numerous complaints. In 1537
Richard Bellasis, one of the monastery-wreckers, was unable to proceed
with his work: “lead from the roofs,” he reports, “cannot be conveyed
away till next summer, for the ways in that countrie are so foule and
deepe that no carriage [cart] can pass in winter.” Indeed, no one seems
to have looked after the roads with any care, either in the fifteenth
or the sixteenth century. Yet there were, in this country, repeated
bequests for their preservation. Henry Clifford, Earl of Cumberland,
a sufferer himself, left one hundred marks to be bestowed on the
highways in Craven, and the same sum on those of Westmorland. John
Lyon, the founder of Harrow School, gave certain rents for the repair
of the roads from Harrow and Edgware to London. This was in 1592, and
Lyon’s example was speedily followed by Sutton, the founder of the
Charterhouse. There was, indeed, legislation of a kind, but in general
the roads were in a terrible condition, and for a long time, so far as
men were concerned, the saddle remained triumphant.
And for an even longer time continued that prejudice against carriages
which led to the framing of actual prohibitive laws. Even women
were occasionally forbidden the use of coaches, and there is the
story of the luxurious duchess who in 1546 found great difficulty in
obtaining from the Elector of Saxony permission to be driven in a
covered carriage to the baths—such leave being granted only on the
understanding that none of her attendants were to be allowed the same
privilege. So, too, in 1564, Pope Pius IV was exhorting his cardinals
and bishops to leave the new-fangled machines to women, and twenty-four
years later Julius, Duke of Brunswick, found it necessary to issue an
edict—it makes quaint reading now—ordering his “vassals, servants,
and kinsmen, without distinction, young and old,” who “have dared to
give themselves up to indolence and to riding in coaches ... to take
notice that when We order them to assemble, either altogether or in
part, in Times of Turbulence, or to receive their Fiefs, or when on
other occasions they visit Our Court, they shall not travel or appear
in Coaches, but on their riding Horses.” More stringent is the edict,
preserved amongst the archives of the German county of Mark, in which
the nobility was forbidden the use of coaches “under penalty of
incurring the punishment of felony.” So, also, we have the case of René
de Laval, Lord of Bois-Dauphin, an extremely obese nobleman living in
Paris, whose only excuse for possessing a coach was his inability to
be set upon a horse, or to keep in that position if the horse chanced
to move. This was in 1550. In England there was a similar feeling of
opposition. In 1584 John Lyly, in his play _Alexander and Campaspe_,
makes one of his characters complain of the new luxury. In the old
days, he says, those who used to enter the battlefield on hard-trotting
horses, now ride in coaches and think of nothing but the pleasures
of the flesh. The once famous Bishop Hall speaks bitterly of the
“sin-guilty” coach:—
“Is’t not a shame to see each homely groome
Sit perched in an idle chariot roome
That were not meete some pannel to bestride
Sursingled to a galled hackney’s hide?
Nor can it nought our gallant’s praises reap,
Unless it be done in staring cheap
In a sin-guilty coach, not closely pent,
Jogging along the harder pavement.”
Possibly the same idea is to be found in the framing of a Parliamentary
Bill of 1601 “to restrain the excessive use of coaches,” which,
however, was thrown out. So again in 1623, the delightful though sadly
biased water-poet, John Taylor, is lamenting the decadence of England,
due, according to him, to the growing custom of driving in coaches.